Impacts of government Regulation, Land Ownership, and...

1 Introduction Brownfield development is the process of redevelopment on previously developed lands that are abandoned, closed or underused (Adams, De Sousa Tiesdell, 2010). While some brownfield can be too contaminated, most brownfields are re-useable to create great value once cleaned up. And in this world of scarce resources, brownfield development becomes crucial as we focus more on sustainability and resource optimizing. While factors of rising awareness of urban sustainability issues, presence of derelict/disused urban space and society’s rising demand for ‘urban lifestyle’ promotes brownfield development, the process to transfer from greenfield development to brownfield development can be very complicated. In this paper, I will†¦show more content†¦The implementation significantly increased the percentage of brownfield development from 50% in 1995 to 60% in 1998 (Adams, 2004). This clearly shows the effectiveness of regulations on brownfield development. However , DETR (mentioned in Adams, 2004) point out we should not be overly positive about the apparent statistic results because they might not be 100% reflective of true facts due to existing loopholes in the structure of the policy. Those loopholes are failure to distinguish rural and urban brownfield development, failure to leave out conversion of good buildings, and failure to recognize the economic effects of housing downturn (DETR as mentioned in Adams, 2004). Generally speaking, location control does promote and increase urban brownfield residential development. But, attention can easily be distracted (Adams, 2004). This is also consistent with founding by Adams, De Sousa Tiesdell (2010). In addition, while location control gave urban brownfield residential development a base start, permitting certain amounts of compulsory purchase of brownfield sites (Adams, De Sousa Tiesdell, 2010) boosted urban brownfield development. This would be another example of government promoting brownfield development by making site assembling easier for developer. This course of action becomes more significant as we get to section 3. On the other hand, regulations that